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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   26640 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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Should someone who is 1% likely to have committed a crime have to serve 1% of the sentence? No, they're either guilty or innocent, The issue is NOT whether they are 1% likely to have committed a crime. It is whether they are 1% likely to be convicted of the charges against them. Those are not at all the same; someone who is found to be 1%, or 50% or even 90% likely to have committed a crime is 100% likely to be acquitted.

the whole point of the system is to find that out. No, the whole point of the system is to determine whether the prosecution has proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the person is guilty. And unlike "guilt" or "innocence", there is no black or white answer that question. The exact same evidence might be seen by one juror as crossing the threshold of reasonable doubt, but by another juror as falling short. That is particularly true given that many, of not most, trials are not whodunits, but whatdonits, and whatdonits are often all about the defendant's mental state: Did he intend to kill, or merely to injure? Was he in fear for his life, or not? And, to make things even more complex, some elements of some crimes and some defenses have no existence outside the judgment of a jury. For example, a person can successfully assert compete self-defense only if the jury finds that a reasonable person in his situation would have felt in fear of his life. Similarly, in Oklahoma, a person is guilty of reckless homicide if he acts with reckless disregard of the safety of others, which "is the omission to do something which a reasonably careful person would do, or the lack of the usual and ordinary care and caution in the performance of an act usually and ordinarily exercised by a person under similar circumstances and conditions." Again, what a reasonable person would do is purely the creation of the judgment of the jury, so it is impossible to say whether a defendant is "guilty" or "innocent" of that crime until a jury has ruled.

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